Pros

Frankly, I took a lot of pride at the opportunity to work on technology that got used by so many people. I learned an awful lot about what it takes to keep a web site reliable. At its best, it encouraged the creativity of its engineers and designers. They were very concerned about the feedback they got from customers; I felt I really knew what the public thought of our technology and what we needed to do to improve it. The competence level of engineers and designers was high. A couple years back, it felt as if what we did was really going to change the world.

Yahoo! had a constant flow of fun events and interesting presentations by knowledgible speakers. They treated us well. The facilities - with the fitness centers and cafeterias - were great. I got the opportunity to travel overseas a couple times, which broadened my view of the world.

Cons

Some problems are well known: Yahoo! lacked a clear vision from upon high. There were intergroup rivalries; your world may have been reproduced by someone at some other location, and they would try to undercut you in favor of their own group. Planning was weak; many deadlines were missed, largely because people had not properly calculated the resources that were needed. The last year I was there, my group realized they had not planned adequately in the past, and overcompensated by insisting on a rather bureaucratic process which killed off much of our group's innovation.

I don't think this was a widespread problem in Yahoo!, but in my specific situation I dealt with a couple managers who came off as particularly manipulative. I didn't form friendships of the sort I had at other employers; there was a bit of a revolving door.

Advice to Senior Management

it's a hard to know what to do with it. Handing search and search advertizing to Microsoft may have been a huge mistake, but time will tell.

Pros

Very good salary and benifits
Cafeteria food is pretty good
Free coffee drinks
Campus is pretty nice and clean
People there are very nice and willing to help
Employees can work from home (though some people seem to be abusing this)

Cons

It is extremely difficult to get data, and I am not talking about sensitive data. Need to go through several teams and get their permissions.

A lot of the documentations are either not detailed enough or simply outdated. It’s difficult to figure out how to use a lot of the tools or even what they are for. Sometimes the team owning the code can’t even help you because the person that wrote it is gone.

A good percentage of engineers do not have math or engineering background. Example: English, History, Music majors. Really make me wonder how they got their jobs.

Now for some personal ventilation, like what the headline stated, I was laid off after just 10 weeks. I was working 10+ hours almost every day and was doing a very good job, yet I got axed with no explaination. I was just out of grad school, and had a couple other offers to choose from. I was told during interview that Yahoo was doing well and still expanding (granted that was last year). Not that I believed all of this given all the negative press, but I still figured that that a newly opened position should be safe for a least a couple of years. Plus I heard that companies rarely layoff young people. That’s why I went with Yahoo anyway, since it gave the highest offer. Boy was I wrong. Now, I’ll have to start my job search all over again, but in a much worse environment, without the help of career center, and a much tighter time constraint. So I pretty much have to take the first offer that I get, whenever that will be. Hard not to get a little angry when I think about it.

Advice to Senior Management

Well, it’s hard for me to give any advice given my short stint there. I guess for one, don't give out offers unless you plan on keeping that person for at least 2 years. Also, try to provide an explanation for the layoff, like why was I needed a couple months ago and not now, instead of just saying the economy is bad and think that people will buy it. I don’t know if that will make it any easier for us to swallow, but at least it shows that the company is taking it seriously and really had no other options.

Pros

Amazing people working on unsurpassed problems and solving with great excellence. People do not appreciate the great undertaking of maintaing one of the biggest websites on the planet and yet still keep innovating.

Cons

Although a lot of people are very excited to be working at Yahoo, it looks like a lot of people still lost that fire that were keeping them going.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure people are excited to be at Yahoo. There is a lot of potential here and the Yahoo brand is still worth a lot.

Pros

Excellent compensation and benefits packages. Good work life balance, flexiblity to telecommute. You also get a chance to work with some very smart people.

Cons

Very uncertain environment, bloated middle management, constant reorgs - In 2 yrs I saw 4 reorgs, very unsettling, you never know if you are going to work on the same thing or will be switched to a different project.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean up the mid-level management. Please reduce the layoff/hiring cycles.

Pros

Good work location, tons of oppornutities, positive environment to grow. The company now is in crossroad, once getting through, the potential would explosive.

Cons

Senior management's ability to take opportunit is questionable, microsoft deal fallout remains to be one of biggest mistakes in company hisotry. Senior management has something to approve.

Advice to Senior Management

leandership and senior management should take more risks under current market situation. the firm is in crossroad, msft or goog? need to resolve sooner then late.r

Pros

A lot of smart people whom are expert in their respective fields. Very collegiate, fun, and friendly atmosphere work environment.

Opportunities to do research and tech advancement.

Cons

Poor leaderships, bad HR people and inexperience employees. These make it hard to request for service or to change direction. Too much complications and meetings.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline the process and focus back to Engineering. Let HR know that their role is to help employee to be successful.

Pros

International team

good packages

great brand

great product

Cons

they never figured out how to integrate in europe. europe has always been the cinderella. a part from fabiola arredondo, who was the right bland of european and american and a very nice person too.

Advice to Senior Management

its time to either come up with something innovative or just sell the business.

Pros

They have very nice perks and an amazing year end party. There were many off site parties and events to attend.

Cons

Management was very scatter brained. There wasn't usually enough work to keep me busy and there would be extended amounts of time where I would not see my manager.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure that the junior associates have enough work to keep busy. Do less parties and more training for junior associates.

Pros

-- A nice and friendly work environment
-- Good benefits and other facilities
-- Reasonable pay
-- Excellent learning opportunities and lots of cool technology

Cons

-- Many in management are pretty clueless.
-- There is an overall lack of accountability.
-- Lots of politics and favoritism, especially in the middle management layers.
-- There seems to be an overall lack of strategy in many areas; decision making is often not quick and clear.

Advice to Senior Management

Please decide what you want to focus on, and execute on those decisions. Stop playing favorites and hold people accountable. Make decisions that are right for the business, and do not bend over backwards just to make some people happy.

Pros

it was a great company to start with. it paved the way for many new ideas and bring them to realiation inspiring million others. Now its lost within its success..

Cons

seems like the structure bloated way too much and the org lost its priority over a period of time. later Quality took a side seat too...

Advice to Senior Management

go back to your roots. start afreah with concepts that are going to help people do things easily and not get thrust by the way you now want them to use technology